Microelectronics research to be led by DARPA, U.S. universities
NewsJanuary 04, 2023
ARLINGTON, Va. DARPA announced that it will participate in a new long-term university research collaboration with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and a consortium of companies in the defense and commercial semiconductor industries, called the Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0).
According to the announcement from DARPA, the goal of JUMP 2.0 is to support high-risk, high-payoff research that addresses existing and emerging challenges in information and communications technologies, as identified in SRC's "Decadal Plan for Semiconductors," including the need for innovation in analog hardware, increasing demand for more memory and data storage, imbalance between data-generation and communication capacity, emerging security vulnerabilities in highly interconnected artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and unsustainable growth in energy demands for computing.
The program intends to open seven collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-university research centers focused on overcoming these challenges and accelerating innovation in applications, supporting exploratory research with an eight- to twelve-year time frame for transition to defense and commercial opportunities.
JUMP 2.0 builds off an earlier version of an SRC-led project launched in 2018 to support university research centers that was focused on keeping the U.S. at the forefront of microelectronics innovation.
